Barcenas

BÁRCENAS

(27-Jun-2009)

Carcar people, myself included, concede that the Noels have been the most influential family in Carcar history. They have had five mayors—after Florencio first became gobernadorcillo in 1879, his sons Vicente, Mariano and Maximino and grandson Arsenio Noel have stepped into the office, too.

On the other hand, the Barcenas family already had three gobernadorcillos (in recorded history) even before Florencio Noel arrived in Carcar: Policarpio, Pedro and Vito. Based on Vicente Noel’s compilation of Carcar mayors, Pedro Barcenas was mayor at least three times (Florencio Noel, six).

But if we count Gregorio Silva and Andres Jimena Avila (both of whose first wives were Barcenas) that’s also quite a hold on power, or being near to it, by a Carcar family.

And while the Noel rise was meteoric, 66 uneventful years in terms of official role have already passed for the family in the town* since Arsenio Noel served as mayor from 1942-43. Meanwhile, Mario Patricio Barcenas (Vito’s 3great-grandson) signaled his family was back in the saddle again when he became mayor in 2001 and is serving his third term until next year 2010.

Meanwhile, a Barcenas family historian has also claimed reconstructing the family tree through church records, internet files, and interviews. Since the result of his work resembles very closely that of mine, I will leave the family’s history to him, I will just be duplicating the effort.

In the 2010 Voters list for Carcar, there are 108 voters surnamed Barcenas, the 89th most numerous surname in the list.

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* Thus discounting Florencio G. Noel, the first Florencio’s great-grandson, who is currently a member of the Philippine House of Representatives but as An-Waray party list representative.

Five Generations

(photo below shows Vito Barcenas’s signature–Vito Barcenas Mod.o (Modesto). Before the Claveria decree, he was known as Vito Modesto. When the family was assigned the surname, he (along with every other Filipino) had to write his new name this way: old first name-new surname-old second name–the style looking very much like the use of the Spanish maternal surname. The form was laid out in the decree itself. Many followed the prescription but after a while dropped the old second name altogether. Like, this was 1863 already and except for him the 11 others who’d signed on this document were not using the second name any more. However, it must be noted that many individuals, instead of their first names, used their second names as the new first names, one reason for which may also be because of the frequent interchanging of the two names [seeBaptisms 1827-1839 Carcar]. Thus, one baptized Juan Lucio in 1834 became Lucio Alcordo.)

[1] In the 1837 marriage record, he was identified as Gregorio Silva de Espinosa, criollo. If correct, criollo makes Gregorio either a son born in the country of two pure Spaniards from Spain, or of two but one or both of whom were already born in the islands. The Criollo classification predates the peninsulares-insulares coinage. This also “ranks” ahead of a mestizo Español because the latter signifies indio or mestizo Sangley maternity already. But most other later records classified Gregorio as mestizo Español, however.

[2] Alcorcon died 15 Feb 1891, 19 months before, but the record said her parents were Marcelo and Petrona.